or good operatic music Cardinal Newman had, we believe, more of a
liking than for the more modern oratorio. Rossini, as a religious
composer, was, we fear, in his bad books, yet when the choice had to
be made at the 1879 Festival as to what performance he would attend,
he at first said, "I shall go once, and I choose _Mose in Egitto_." He
was, he continued, fond of operatic music, and heard very little of
it. "However," he added to two of the Fathers, "there's no reason why
you shouldn't go to all." Perhaps there was one reason against that
course; it would be expensive. There is an amusing notice of Rossini
in the Anglican Letters of Mr. Newman. "Bowden tells me," he wrote in
March, 1824, "that Sola, his sister's music-master, brought Rossini to
dine in Grosvenor Place not long since; and that as far as they could
judge (for he does not speak English) he is as unassuming and obliging
a man as ever breathed. He seemed highly pleased with everything, and
anxious to make himself agreeable. Labouring, indeed, under a severe
cold, he did not sing, but accompanied two or three of his own songs
in the most brilliant manner.... As he came in a private, not a
professional, way, Bowden called on him, and found him surrounded, in
a low, dark room, by about eight or nine Italians, all talking as fast
as possible, who, with the assistance of a great screaming _macaw_,
and of Madame Rossini in a dirty gown and her hair in curl papers,
made such a clamour that he was glad to escape as fast as he
could."[34]

[Footnote 34: Mozley, _Corr._ i. 83.]

The revised Latin play, and music in conjunction, and all played by
the boys themselves, were two striking traditions (not, we trust, to
die out) of the Oratory School in our time, and they were institutions
introduced by Dr. Newman there, and rooted in his affections from
boyhood's associations. "Music was a family taste and pursuit," writes
the late Miss Mozley, "Mr. Newman, the father, encouraged it in his
children. In those early days they could get up performances among
themselves, operatic or simply dramatic."[35] At Ealing School he took
the parts of Davus in the _Andria_, Cyrus in the _Adelphi_, and
Pythias in the _Eunuchus_, as he told us himself; a varied
_repertoire_, _i.e._ the confidential family servant, the young man
about town, and the maid of all work! We see not only plays, and then
music, and lastly the two together, but original composition also,
early engaging his atte